Violence in Moroccan universities: a problem worth addressing

Violence between Morocco’s
young political activists is the product of a deeply divided
political society that has failed to engage with its youngest
members.

Abderrahim Badri. Picture taken from social media. Higher education institutions
the world over are places for young people to explore diverse ideas
and develop important life skills. However, in Morocco, university
students are confronted by extreme violence.

On 19 May 2018, in the University
of Ibn Zohr in Agadir, violent
confrontations
between pro-independence Sahrawi and Amazigh Cultural Movement
students led to the murder of Abderrahim Badri, a 24-year-old
undergraduate law student. Another 30 students were arrested in the
following days, as young people across the country struggled to come
to terms with yet another unnecessary death in Moroccan universities.

Structural & direct violence in the
university

Violence between students’ groups
in Moroccan universities is significant, widespread and inherently
linked with structural conditions in the country. Structural violence
denies secure and dignified living conditions and prevents the
realisation of individual and collective goals and, in Morocco,
structural violence goes hand in hand with direct force. The current
situation in the country is deeply-affected by a socio-political
phenomenon that goes unnoticed by outside observers, despite the
immediate effects it has on a large and critical constituency for the
future of the country: university students.

Morocco’s university groups are
characterised by their ideologies, identities and their links with
political parties and movements at the national level. There are
numerous tensions both within and between ideological and identity
groups. Student factions dominate certain faculties or campuses
around the country and claim control over them. They trumpet their
differences by decorating the physical spaces of the universities
with their own pictures, quotes and events. Narratives of victimhood
and the logic of revenge feature strongly in these groups, as seen in
the portraits of Amazigh, Islamist, Leftist or Sahrawi martyrs that
line university corridors and cafeterias; depending on which party
controls the space. Too often, the outcome of these divisions is
wanton violence against other students.

Islamist university groups

Tadjdid Tolabi (Students’
Renewal), is one of the largest and most organised, and the youth
wing of the largest Islamist political party, Al
Adala Wal Tanmia
(Justice and Development Party). Ithas an oscillating
relationship with another religiously-inspired students’ group,
linked to Al Adl Wal
Ihsane (Justice and
Beneficence), an influential Islamist opposition movement that was
the main force behind the 20 February 2011 uprisings across Morocco.

Leftist factions

Ad-Dimoqrateen At-Taqadumeen
(Progressive Democrats) is a Leftist faction with links to the
Unified Socialist Party; just as At-Tali’ia
Ad-Dimoqratia (the
Democratic Vanguard) is affiliated with the radical Leftist
opposition party, the Democratic Path. These political parties
participate in organised opposition politics in Morocco, so some
hard-line Marxist groups disparage them as sell-outs. Al
Barnamaj Al Marhali (The
Conjunctural Program) and Al
Qa’ideen (The Base
Program), are two radical Marxist factions that operate in different
university campuses without any affiliation to mainstream political
parties.

Many of Morocco’s Leftist
students’ groups and political parties originate in Ilal
Amam (Forward), a
powerful Communist movement which was founded in 1976 but
subsequently destroyed by King Hassan II in the context of the Cold
War and his repression of all opposition (including the National
Union of Moroccan Students (UNEM), which was a centre of Leftist
political organisation). Today, most Moroccan Leftist parties have
been recognised as legitimate and have adopted a contemporary
political struggle from within the organs of the modern state.

However, some radical student
groups, including the Conjunctural Program and students affiliated
with the Base Program, constitute an isolated fringe movement within
Moroccan political society. The Conjunctural Program espouses the use
of force as an integral part of its ideology – perhaps as a
response to the years of oppression suffered by this group. From the
perspective of students on the Left and among religious student
factions, the Conjunctural Program is the group behind violence in
universities. From their side, some radical Leftist students attack
the perceived chauvinism of the pro-Independence Sahrawis and Amazigh
Cultural Movement as the most dangerous factor in university campuses
across the country.

Ethnic & nationalist
student groups

Sahrawi pro-Independence groups are
perceived to be loosely affiliated with the Polisario Front and its
government-in-exile, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR),
because of their political position on self-determination. The
Amazigh Cultural Movement is affiliated with the broader national
movement for the recognition of Amazigh language, culture and
history.

Around the country, radical student supporters and members
of these groups have tense relations with almost all other groups –
they consider Sahrawi students as pan-Arabists, negating Amazigh
identity; they oppose all forms of religious groups, leading to
tension with Islamist students; and they advocate for identity-based
forms of organisation, contrary to the internationalist Marxist
students. Outside observers say the two main lines of tension in
Moroccan universities are 1) between Sahrawis and Amazigh and 2)
between Islamists and Leftists/Secularists.

Divides and territorial realities

Political aims, ideologies and
identities undoubtedly contribute to heightening the tensions that
can lead to violence between Moroccan university factions, and the
devastating case of Abderrahim Badri is not exceptional. Since the
end of 2017, local press reported that the university of Moulay
Ismail in Meknes was the scene of two attempted homicides between
students of the Amazigh Cultural Movement and the Conjunctural
Program. In the same month, students affiliated with the same
factions clashed again in a university in Fez, demonstrating how
violent incidents can spread and multiply through the logic of
exacting revenge.

Fez, home of the world’s first
university, has been the setting of several violent acts between
university students, dating back to the early 1990s when Leftist
student Benaïssa Aït El Jid was allegedly
murdered by
members of Tajdid Tolabi.
More recently, 21-year-old Abderrahim El Hasnaoui, of Tadjid
Tolabi, was killed
in April 2014 by a group of Leftist students armed with knives. The
most recent clashes between Moroccan students’ factions took place
on 7 March 2018, when a confrontation between Al
Adl Wal Ihsane students
and the Conjunctural Program left tens of wounded young people and
widespread destruction to university property and adjacent
residential areas. Local reports stated that students used stones,
bicycle chains and iron tools to do the greatest damage possible to
each other. These clashes were so devastating that the centre of Fez,
and the main road to its international airport, were closed until
police re-established control.

A territorial dispute between these
factions, who control different campuses of the same university, was
sparked by each aiming to prevent the other from carrying out
political activities in their respective spaces. This censorship
reflects the contrasting ideologies of these Islamist and Secularist
students, separated by radically different positions on key social,
political and cultural issues. Fez universities see some of the
highest levels of violence between Islamist and Leftist/Secular
groups, dating back to the mid-2000s and making it one of the worst
areas of student violence in the country.

Collective victimhood & the cycle of violence

Moroccan university groups have
come to define themselves by their collective experiences of direct
violence, particularly the attacks on student activists spanning 50
years. Omar Ben Jelloun of the Union of Socialist Forces was
assassinated in 1975. El Moati, a student of the University of Oujda
was kidnapped in 1991. Violence between Islamist and Leftist students
in Fez led to the murder of Abderrahman El Hasnaoui, in 2007. Omar
Khaleq, from the Amazigh Cultural Movement, was killed
by Sahrawi students at the university of Qadi Ayyad in Marrakesh, in
2016. At the University of Meknes, in May 2016, a young girl, Chaima,
had her head
forcibly shaved and was beaten
in front of a group of student onlookers in a kangaroo court. In
December 2017 in Oujda and January 2018 in Fez, students were
kidnapped and tortured with batons and threatened with amputation or
beheading by members of the Amazigh Cultural Movement, the local
press reported.

Each of these attacks has been
immortalised by the victimised groups, for example in the anthems
that student groups recite at their meetings, where the memories of
these injustices fuel mistrust of the ‘others’ and justify
retaliatory attacks.

The death of Abderrahim Badri fits
into this cycle of violence. Some see his murder as connected to that
of Omar Khaleq in 2016. The reciprocal, multiplying and disturbing
acts of violence between Morocco’s young political activists is no
accident. It is the product of a deeply divided political society
that has failed to engage with its youngest members, to include them
in the national political space and to develop policies based on the
needs of the majority.

Abderrahim’s death should also be
understood as part of a wider national and regional political
context. After all, he was the casualty of a broader struggle over
the identity of the Moroccan state, where both Sahrawi and Amazigh
cultural and political groups have travelled a long road in demanding
recognition. Abderrahim was described
in one Algerian report as a Sahrawi pro-independence activist, in a
nation where the official policy negates the existence of a Sahrawi
state, in an infamous stalled conflict between Morocco, Algeria and
the SADR, that began in the 1970s.

So, a conflict in the university
becomes a matter of national security and foreign affairs;
threatening a possible expansion of violence.
Where Sahrawi activists demand independence from Morocco, Amazigh
activists demand their inclusion in Morocco; where Sahrawis have
called for the creation of an Arab republic, Amazigh define
themselves as an indigenous constituency in a transnational North
African community.

whose reponsibility?

Violence between university
students reflects the poverty of Moroccan university education, which
leaves its graduates ill-equipped to manage their differences in a
marketplace of ideas. Some young people worry
that this phenomenon heralds a generation of victims and
perpetrators, scarred by their experiences of violence and punishment
alike.

The widely-held perception of
Moroccans is that the state and its successive governments have
ignored and remained passive on the issue; a stance which has
undoubtedly contributed to the proliferation
of these incidents. A report
launched by the National Council for Human Rights in 2014 named the
state as a determining actor in the violence in campuses because of
the excessive violence of police officers, the pauperisation of the
student population and the politically-motivated favouritism of
certain students over others.

Aside from the state, there is also
a need for political parties and movements to engage with and include
student leaders, rather than using them just to shore up political
influence in universities. These young men and women have the right
to express their political vision for the future of the country and
to fight for their interests within the society. This kind of
leadership role for university activists can also be encouraged by
civil society actors and organisations, particularly for students’
groups with no political affiliation. Civil society’s political
independence can be a positive factor for facilitating communication
between factions who are not able to open channels of communication
or who reject engagement with other political groups.

A first step to overcoming the
mistrust between student factions would be the facilitation of safe
spaces for their representatives to meet, to dialogue, and to discuss
the root causes, shape and potential future of fraught student
relations in Moroccan universities. These meetings could include
diverse representatives of students’ groups (across regional,
cultural and ideological divides), or focus on intra-group relations
– particularly in the case of disparate Leftist groups who have
struggled to develop a unified contemporary discourse. These
dialogues could be about issues that concern all student activists,
for example the divisive legacy of the UNEM, which is controlled by
students affiliated with Al
Adl Wal Ihsane today.

Many Moroccan students have
advocated for creating a code of ethics enshrining the values
developed and agreed by students. However, this document would have
to be the result of a comprehensive process of dialogue on the main
issues underlying student violence, to have any impact.

One cross-ideological student
initiative could be to lobby university administrations to install a
kind of Early Warning, Early Response system to identify potential
student conflicts and to defuse them in a fair and transparent way.Some student-led
mediation initiatives
have already been attempted in Moroccan universities, but more
support is needed for these dialogues to facilitate change on the
ground.

For the time being, the highest
echelons of Moroccan society do not see the benefits of engaging with
their youth but if this violence continues to escalate in the long
term, they will not have a choice. An inclusive, balanced and
participative political space can be the only solution to extremist
violence – be it inspired by religion, identity or ideology.

About the author

Kheira Tarif is a conflict transformation consultant, currently based in Geneva, Switzerland.

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